


Partial Assembly Required

by KareliaSweet



Series: Instruction Manual [1]
Category: Adam (2009), Charlie Countryman (2013), Hannibal (TV)
Genre: First Kiss, Fluff, Gravitational waves, M/M, Space nerds, Spacedogs Appreciation Week, meet cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-23
Updated: 2016-02-23
Packaged: 2018-05-22 19:19:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6091384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KareliaSweet/pseuds/KareliaSweet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The early days of a certain young gentleman's adventures in California, featuring an unlikely friendship with our favourite fan of profanity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Partial Assembly Required

**Author's Note:**

> The is a prequel to _This Romanian Contains Strong Language_ , some Spacedogs prompts that came together Voltron-style and formed a story of their own.

Three weeks now.

Three weeks he’s been coming over for dinner.

Uninvited.

When Harlan had warned him that Southern California was a friendly place, this was not what Adam had expected.

He’d steeled himself for wide and vacuous smiles full of bleached teeth and hugs he hadn’t asked for, not burly Romanians with no sense of personal boundaries who decide they want you to teach them about space and won’t take no for an answer.

But here he is, sitting next to Nigel eating macaroni and cheese for the eighth time in as many days ( _there was that one occasion where he had worn him down and convinced him to order takeout - “just this once, I’ll fucking pay, darling”_ ), watching Cosmos whilst Nigel provides expletive-laden running commentary.

At the very least, the commentary is positive.

“This is really fucking fascinating.”

Adam takes another bit of pasta and nods. Technically it’s not macaroni tonight, Nigel had found Star Wars shapes at Target and couldn’t resist the novelty.

“Yes, it is.” He’s stopped bothering to correct Nigel’s swears. There’s about as much chance getting Adam to stop staring at the stars as there is for Nigel to stop peppering every sentence with at least three ‘fuck’s. And if he’s being honest, he likes the way it sounds.

He looks at Nigel, legs splayed wide on the couch and half-finished beer dangling between thumb and forefinger. Somehow this man, by virtue of chance and an interesting shirt, has become his friend.

He’d just been trying to practice that ‘being friendly’ thing that Californians were wont to do, had seen Nigel walking toward him with that lithe swagger of his, had noticed the dachshunds and said he liked his shirts.

Nigel had stopped, frowned, said  _you fucking what_  and demanded Adam tell him what he was doing with  _that fucking thing_.

That fucking thing was Adam’s telescope, and he had calmly offered to show Nigel the distant light of Jupiter.

Nigel had looked at him like he had grown five heads.

 _“You’re not fucking afraid of me, are you darling?”_  
  
“No. Am I supposed to be?”  
  
“Not at fucking all, starman. Show me Jupiter, then.”

And that, as they say, had been that.

“The fuck you looking at, starman?”

Attention brought back to the here and now, to the rough smoke of Nigel’s voice, Adam startles and tugs at the ends of his sweater.

“You have a bit of cheese on your chin,” he says quietly.

Nigel smears roughly at his face with the back of his hand. “Good?”

Adam nods, tucks his feet a little further under him, curling his toes into the backs of his thighs.

A truth and a lie. Nigel is a consistently messy eater, on any given day he’s almost guaranteed to have sort of sauce flecked on his shirt, but that wasn’t why Adam was looking at him at all.

He trains his eyes back on the television, but the ghost of Nigel’s face dances on the backs of his retinas. He’s never been attracted to men before, but Nigel isn’t really  _men_ , he’s just… Nigel. Brash, loud, singular Nigel, who hasn’t once batted an eye at Adam’s oddness. The one time he used the word ‘oddness’ to describe himself, Nigel had frowned and swore that anyone stupid enough to call Adam  _odd_ deserved a kick in the face. That should have upset Adam, and it did - a little - but it also pooled a nice warm heat in his belly, a thrill at the idea of being so protected. He had been aroused, then, but had kept it to himself. Hadn’t asked.

It’s getting harder not to ask.

“Fuck, are you paying attention, darling?”

Adam blinks, chin in hand.

“What?”

Nigel is gesturing wildly at the television. “This fucking shit! Fucking tardigrades - did you know about these fuckers?”

Adam smiles at the infectious enthusiasm, ignores the down-low heat sparked by Nigel’s cursing. “Yes, I’ve read about them.”

Nigel whistles through his teeth. “In  _space_. In fucking  _space._ Stubborn little shits.”

He laughs then, reaches between the armchair and couch to give a convivial pat to the side of Adam’s arm. “Just like you and me.”

The contact sends a shiver through him and Adam’s elbow nearly slips off the arm of the couch. Nigel recoils instantly.

“Sorry,” he says gruffly, though there is a little hurt tucked into it that can’t quite be placed.

Adam shrugs. “You didn’t mean to.”

He realigns himself, tucks his thumb between his teeth, focuses back on the television. He sneaks one last glance at Nigel in his periphery, arm still tingling from the unexpected touch. Nigel’s eyes are trained just above his elbow, on the spot currently alight with goosebumps. He swallows thickly, flicks his eyes up to Adam’s and clears his throat, looks back to the T.V.

Adam smiles thoughtfully.

Maybe tomorrow he’ll have that discussion with him about the Kinsey scale.

-x-

The knocking is loud and insistent.  
  
It would set Adam’s nerves on edge at any time, but to be hearing it - he glances at his clock - at 5:23 am is enough to spark at his temper.  
  
“Adam!”  
  
Another volley of violent knocks follows through and Adam flings off the covers.  
  
“Adam, fucking open up!”  
  
He makes it to the latch before Nigel can inflict further abuse upon his innocent door.  
  
“Nigel, stop,” he croaks out as he undoes the second latch, “you’ll wake the neighbours.”  
  
“I’m your closest fucking neighbour, Adam, and I’m awake, so I’ll knock as much as I fucking want.” The words would be harsh except for the decidedly sing-song tone they’re delivered in.  
  
Adam swings the door open, rubbing at his eyes sleepily as Nigel barrels into the apartment with a whoop, picking him bodily up off the floor.  
  
“D'you hear?” he crows, “did you fucking hear?”  
  
“Nigel!” Adam squirms impatiently. “Nigel, put me down.”  
  
Nigel, for once, follows the instruction and sets Adam gently down. He is grinning, all sharp teeth and giddiness. He almost looks like he wants to start dancing.  
  
Adam yawns and collapses himself into the couch, tucking his knees under him. He looks up expectantly.  
  
“What is going on? Why did you wake me up?”  
  
Nigel squats next to him on the floor, grin still spread wide, and pulls his phone from his pocket.  
  
“Look,” he says excitedly, “gravitational fucking waves, darling.”  
  
“Gravitational - ” Adam snatches the phone from his hand and stares at the article in bewilderment.  
  
_[A team of scientists announced on Thursday that they had heard and recorded the sound of two black holes colliding a billion light-years away, a fleeting chirp that fulfilled the last prediction of Einstein’s general theory of relativity.](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/12/science/ligo-gravitational-waves-black-holes-einstein.html?_r=1)_  
__  
“I have no fucking clue what it means,” Nigel says, “but you talk about it all the fucking time, I had to show you.”  
  
Adam jumps from the couch, scrolling through the article and mouthing the words as he goes. One hand goes to his hair and tugs at a scraggly puff that sticks straight up in the air. Eyes flicking up, he smiles so hard it hurts.  
  
“Nigel,” he breathes, “Nigel, this is-”  
  
He searches his mind to find a word big enough for what he’s feeling but he can’t, he simply just can’t. His body vibrates with excitement, head to toe electric sunshine. He doesn’t even realize he’s bouncing on his toes until Nigel picks him up again and twirls him around the apartment, the glowing phone spinning in his hand like a little firefly.  
  
Adam laughs. He laughs, and cheers, and flings his arms back, and Nigel is there with him, gleeful and basking. When, eventually, he gets a little dizzy, he taps Nigel’s shoulder and slowly they stop spinning.  
  
Nigel’s arms, however, stay around his waist, squeezing a little as his feet touch the hardwood. Adam’s arms are circled around his neck, and he realizes he doesn’t even remember when he’d done that.  
  
He finds he doesn’t care.  
  
The joy of the discovery is still racing through his veins as he feels the current of another happiness start to pump through him.  
  
Nigel brought him this.  
  
Nigel, who knows nothing about gravitational waves or what this all means, who only knew that it was important to Adam, came straight to him.  
  
Nigel, who comes over every night for mac and cheese, who calls him on the nights that he can’t to make sure Adam’s eating.  
  
Nigel, who has somehow made the word ‘fuck’ start to sound like poetry.  
  
Nigel. His friend.

Except, Adam thinks, that’s not what he is.

Sweary, gruff, lovely,  _impossible_  Nigel is not his friend at all.   
  
So if Nigel isn’t his friend, what is he?  
  
Adam shakes his head, looks up at Nigel, who is no longer smiling, just breathing, quietly. He looks… a little shy.  
  
Nigel opens his mouth to speak, blinks, shakes his head, closes his mouth. Licks his lips unconsciously.  
  
Adam just stares, observes the stark lines of his cheekbones, the whiskey-caramel of his eyes, the soft crinkles at their corners.  
  
Nigel, he realizes, is so much more.  
  
And in the midst of his parallel joys, as part of his brain wonders exactly what it sounded like when two black holes collided, he decides to make a collision of his own. Hands clasped at his neck, he pulls Nigel’s mouth down to his.  
  
Nigel tenses and goes very still. He lets Adam lead, meets the pressure of his lips, tentative but firm. When Adam pulls away ( _not yet_ , Nigel thinks, _just a little fucking more_ ), a beautiful flush begins to dapple his cheeks.  
  
“I want to know what the sound of black holes colliding is,” Adam says.  
  
Nigel scrunches his face, perplexed. “You fucking what?”  
  
“There were two things I needed to know. I’ve figured out the first one.”  
  
Nigel nods thoughtfully, or at least tries to make it appear like he is.  
  
“Okay,” he says slowly, “what was the first thing then?”  
  
Adam arches a weary eyebrow as though it were patently obvious. “I wanted to know what it would be like to kiss you.”  
  
Nigel’s lips curl back in a grin. “And what did you think?”  
  
Adam ducks his head. His fingers slip into the ends of Nigel’s hair and the flush starts to bloom full and rosy. “I liked it very much,” he replies, “I’d very much like to do it some more. A lot. Many times.” He pauses a moment, considering, eyes on Nigel’s chin. “And I’d like to have sex with you.”  
  
Breath suddenly knocked out of him, Nigel sways, nudging their noses together.  
  
“I’d like that too,” he rasps, stealing another kiss, “we can listen to black holes after.”  
  
And then he pulls their bodies close together and sets to work on a new scientific discovery. He maps the contours of Adam’s mouth, the pale line of his throat and the delightful curve of his smile, meeting the sweet wet glide of his tongue as he kisses him thoroughly. He sucks Adam’s beautiful bottom lip between his teeth and tugs, palms sliding down Adam’s back to cup his bottom.  
  
And somewhere between the myriad of kisses and very quickly more, Adam makes that little sound. That sweet sound that escapes when something overwhelms him and Nigel’s knees almost buckle from the joy of knowing that finally -  _finally_  - he gets to be the one to make him produce that noise.  
  
If black holes colliding sound like anything, Nigel thinks, it must be this.

 

**Author's Note:**

> All this and more at [lovecrimevariations](http://lovecrimevariations.tumblr.com).


End file.
